Turning cameras off during Zoom meetings can help the climate, study finds
www.ctvnews.ca
Turning off the camera during Zoom or video meetings can actually help reduce a person's carbon footprint of the call by 96 per cent, a new environmental study finds.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/4470763

(link covers a 2021 study by Purdue, Yale, and MIT)

Some folks think teleworking is favorable to the environment on the basis that they avoid driving to work. IMO that’s quite far-fetched when you consider that a worksite with a capacity of ~1000 workers would consume much less energy than heating and cooling 1000 residential homes. Then you have account for the footprint attributed to heavy internet bandwidth demands.

Nothing beats cycling to work and working on-site. But if you are working from home, it’s worthwhile to try to attend non-video conferences. A presenter may have no choice in some cases but certainly you need not see everyone’s faces.

FWiW, these are steps to disable high-bandwidth frills:

Firefox

(disable animations)
  • disable animations (non-CSS, non-GIF varieties): about:config » toolkit.cosmeticAnimations.enabled » true→false
  • disabling CSS animations needs these ad-hoc steps
  • disabling animated GIFs (useless?): about:config » image.animation_mode » (normal → none) or (normal → once, to just disable the play loops) Or for refined on-the-fly control install this plugin ⚠Disabling animated GIFs in Firefox may be useless. I get the impression animated GIFs are still fetched but simply not played automatically, thus bandwidth is still wasted.
(disable still images)

about:config » permissions.default.image » 1→2

Chrome/Chromium

(disable GIF animations only)

Install this plugin first which only works sometimes; when it fails try this one.

(disable still images)
  1. Click the Customize and control Google Chrome menu button, which is the on the far-right side of the URL toolbar.
  2. Select Settings on the menu to bring up that tab.
  3. Click Privacy and security on the left side of Google Chrome.
  4. Select Site Settings to view the content options.
  5. Then click Images to bring up the options shown directly below.
  6. Select the Don’t allow sites to show images radio button.

I have deliberately spared readers from the source links to the above info because the information is buried in enshitified webpages with shenanigans like cookie popups that have no reject all option. Looks like this post is a bit enshitified itself since the details/summary HTML tags are broken here (they tend to be accepted on other Lemmy instances). If anyone knows the fix plz let me know. (reported)

  • pixxelkick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    I love when articles don’t bother to actually clarify the math.

    That number is if everyone turned off their webcams, and is the amount across everyone.

    Which only works out to like 80g per person.

    Which is less than a couple minutes of driving.

    You produce about 20x that running your oven for an hour.

    • activistPnk@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      That number is if everyone turned off their webcams, and is the amount across everyone.

      Of course. You don’t video conference with yourself.

      You seem to be saying each individual should make the individualized decision that their own contribution is insignificant, which leads you to a room full of people needlessly each transmitting their face and cummulatively emitting 1kg CO₂/hr.

      • pixxelkick@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        The point is theyve taken “If you didnt drive to work” in terms of phrasing, but the number is if everyone stopped driving into work.

        Which heavily inflates it.

        You seem to be saying each individual should make the individualized decision that their own contribution is insignificant, which leads you to a room full of people needlessly each transmitting their face and cummulatively emitting 1kg CO₂/hr.

        This is about the equivalent of 1 person cooking something in their oven, which is such a miniscule amount. One person Each of the participants eating a small medium bag of nuts has a bigger footprint.

        • activistPnk@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          One person eating a small bag of nuts has a bigger footprint.

          Nonsense. Unless 1 person eats for 20 (2kg of nuts), you’re off by an order of magnitude. At least the math in your previous post was not dodgy (it just squandered social responsibility). Now you’re grasping.

          BTW, as a general rule of thumb, you should never eat something bigger than your head. Eating a 2kg bag of nuts in one sitting would fail that.

          • pixxelkick@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            7 months ago

            I stand corrected, thats an extremely handy website, I thought mixed nuts had a much larger footprint not gonna lie.

            I’ll fix my post.